The race to save the world's seeds

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, brought a gift of seeds from Kew when she visited VanDusen Gardens in 2009 to plant a tree. She also took the seed of some B.C. native plants back to England for the Millennium Seed Bank.Handout photo
/ Vancouver Sun

More than one billion seeds have already been collected and stored at the Millennium Seed Bank. The goal is to gather 25 per cent of the world's endangered plant seeds by 2020.Handout photo
/ Vancouver Sun

Seed collectors are hard at work in more than 50 countries to save seed, some of which is used for restoration projects.Handout photo
/ Vancouver Sun

China is collecting and safeguarding 4,000 threatened species of plants, with half being kept in Kew.Handout photo
/ Vancouver Sun

Not many people know that Vancouver is part of a worldwide effort to save the world's endangered plant species from extinction.

When Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, came to town in 2009, she visited VanDusen Botanical Garden to plant a tree.

But she did much more than that.

She also initiated a process that allowed the garden to become part of a project started in 2000 by Kew Garden in London to establish a Millennium Seed Bank — a kind of Noah's ark for seed designed to preserve the world's most threatened plant species for future generations.

It is estimated that a third of the world's total number of plants species — between 60,000 and 100,000 — are threatened with extinction. Changes in land use, climate change and overexploitation are the main factors aggravating the situation.

"The Millennium Seed Bank may be physically located in England, but its program connects botanical gardens worldwide," says Jongerden.

"We send seed of plant species to Wakehurst, and in return we can request seed from the MSB as well."

Jongerden says Camilla's visit was an important moment in VanDusen becoming part of the conservation consortium.

"Camilla's visit was the catalyst for VanDusen joining this effort. And it was our contacts with the Native Plant Society of B.C. that got us seed of conservation value."

Located at Wakehurst Place, near Haywards Heath in West Sussex, the Millenium Seed Bank was officially opened in 2000 by Prince Charles who described the bank as "a gold reserve — a place where the reserve currency, in this case life itself, is stored."

But the initial idea that the world's seed needed to be conserved in a safe place goes back to the 1980s when Roger Smith became the head of seed research at Kew's Wakehurst Park.

It took 10 years before there was enough money, a good chunk of which came from Britain's popular department store chain, Marks & Spencer, to hire a full-time seed collector.

A major push to get the seed bank established also came after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when the alarm bells rang loud and clear about disappearing species and the need to bank as much endangered seed as possible.

When the Millennium Seed Bank opened, its goal was to collect 10 per cent of the world's wild plant species by 2010, including the rarest and most threatened and most useful species known.

Within 14 months, the bank had collected the seed of 20,200 species. And by 2007, it had collected one billion seeds.

News of the project spread quickly around the world and it wasn't long before a global network of 123 organizations from more than 50 countries was established to fulfil the task.

As well as storing seed at Wakehurst, Kew works hard to see that the country of origin also manages to store its endangered seed.

The next phase of the project is to have by 2020 at least 25 per cent of known plant life protected; that involves collecting the seed of more than 75,000 species. There are an estimated 400,000 plant species in existence.

There are other global seed-saving efforts underway.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened in 2008 on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. Three concrete chambers there have the capacity to store 3.5 million seed samples. The ones being collected are mostly seed for food crops.

In the U.S. the National Centre for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, CO., is on a mission to "acquire, evaluate, preserve and provide a national collection of genetic resources to secure the biological diversity that underpins a sustainable U.S. agricultural economy through diligent stewardship, research and communication."

In Russia, the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg has been collecting seed for almost a century and is said to have the world's largest collection. It continues to work with other countries, notably Japan and Germany, on seed-collecting missions.

At Kew's Wakehurst facility, seed is kept in a vast cold storage at a temperature of minus 4 C (20F) once it has been rigorously cleaned and dried. It is also placed in quarantine for a time before being packaged.

The seed bank has already managed to save the seed of all of Britain's native species. This makes Britain the first country to have harvested and preserved its botanical heritage.

Kew has also worked with High Weald Landscape Trust to create the UK Native Seed Hub, an organization that aims to restore the diversity of the past by providing millions of seeds to horticulture companies, conservation groups and gardeners.

Seeds are now being germinated to restore meadows to their former glory and a wide range of rare wildflower species reintroduced, such as ragged robin, devil's-bit scabious, cuckoo flower, green field-speedwell and harebell.

The seed bank is also working to rehabilitate the flora on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, where large tracts of forest have been destroyed by repeated volcanic eruptions.

Why Plant Hunt is so crucial

In a new book, The Last Great Plant Hunt: The Story of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, by Carolyn Fry, Sue Seddon and Gail Vines, the beauty of seeds as "life-giving works of art" is emphasized, as well as the practical aspect of how seeds "underpin human evolution".

In case anyone gets the idea that seed collecting is easy, the book points out that in Botswana, plant hunters confronted threats from lions, buffalo, scorpions and snakes in their search for the illusive Tsodilo daisy (Erlangea remifolia), a plant on the verge of extinction with fewer than 50 individual plants left in the wild.

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